← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Axiom Space Station’s ambitious timeline.
00:26:02
Axiom revises its space station schedule. Eutelsat taps Airbus for new OneWeb satellites. SES launches two new O3b mPOWER satellites. And more.
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You're listening to the N2K space network.
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Nothing like a deadline to motivate and timelines in the future are closer than they appear. 2025 is awfully close now, and when calendars change over, we will be officially five years to go for the ISS deorbit. That's pretty darn soon when we're talking space timelines full speed ahead on commercial space stations. In the meantime, there really isn't much time to lose. Today is December 18, 2024. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T. Axiom revises its space station schedule Utelsat taps Airbus for new OneWeb satellites, SES launches two new O3B MPower satellites, and T Minus producer Alice Carruth will be speaking to Ryan Brown, Executive Director of spacecom, and they'll be sharing what's to come at that conference. By the way, we here at T Minus will be at Space Week in Florida late January, so see you there. Happy Wednesday everybody. Let's get into it. Yesterday, our top story was about Voyager Space's Star Lab hitting some key milestones in support of NASA's post ISS plans in low Earth orbit. And today Axiom Space is announcing changes to its Axiom Station module sequence in alignment with those NASA goals. This change will allow Axiom Station to operate independently of the ISS by 2028, which is two years earlier than planned. The original plan was for the Axiom Habitat one to go to the ISS first before the power and thermal module attached. Now the power and thermal module will go first, with the habitat next and other modules to follow. This revised plan will also make space for the deorbit vehicle on the iss. This approach enables the station to transition to a free flying platform after the power and thermal module, or axpptm, is operational, which will ensure uninterrupted human presence and advanced commercial space goals. The AXPPTM is currently being constructed by Telus Alenius Base in Italy, with final integration planned in Houston by 2025. Staying in Europe though, for a bit on these next few stories. Eutelsat has selected Airbus Defense and Space to build the extension of its OneWeb Low Earth Orbit constellation. Airbus will build the first batches of the extension, totaling 100 satellites with delivery targeting the end of 2026. The new satellites will have technology upgrades, notably 5G on ground integration. They will be technologically compatible with Europe's Iris Squared constellation, which we talked about earlier this week on the show, by the way, paving the way for its entry into operational service in 2030. SCS successfully launched its latest pair of O3B MPower satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space center last night. Both satellites will join the first 6:03B MPower spacecraft already in operation at medium Earth orbit, adding incremental capacity to the initial O3B MPower constellation. The five remaining O3B MPower satellites for that constellation are currently being manufactured and are scheduled for launch over the next 18 months. Earth observation company Ice I has closed a $65 million extension to an existing growth funding round. The financing consists of a mix of debt and equity instruments and will increase investment in further developing icei's leading SAR satellite constellation, its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform and related systems. The extension brings the total amount raised in 2024 to $158 million. In total, ISEI has raised over $500 million to date. Citus Space has raised $14 million through shares of its common stock. Citus has entered into definitive securities purchase agreements with accredited and institutional investors for the issuance and sale of units consisting of shares of Class A common stock together with warrants at a price of $2.07 per unit. The company intends to use the proceeds from the offering for working capital and general corporate purposes. Japan's commercial space sector experienced a setback earlier today after Space1 failed to successfully launch. Tokyo based startup Space1 was aiming to become the first private Japanese company to place a satellite into orbit. It failed for a second time after the 18 meter 23 ton solid fuel Kairos no. 2 rocket experienced a malfunction during the ascent. The launch was automatically terminated 3 minutes and 7 seconds after liftoff during the combustion of the second stage rocket. Space One President Masakazu Toyoda apologized for failing to meet the expectations of those who supported the launch, stating, we will quickly investigate the cause of this outcome and clarify measures to prevent a recurrence. Toyota also added that Space One does not consider this incident a failure. He told a news conference that the data and experience gained from this event are extremely valuable. Space One is planning on a third launch attempt in the near future. Viasat has been awarded a new contract by the U.S. defense Innovation Unit to deliver networking capability in support of the Replicator initiative The contract for the DiU opportunistic resilient and Innovative Expeditionary Network Topology Project, which is also known by the acronym Orient, covers resilient command and control connectivity across unmanned systems. ViaSat will provide multi domain uncrewed secure Integrated communications architecture, which is also known as the acronym music. Now MUSIC includes software defined networking to enable the seamless and resilient connectivity of autonomous systems using multi transport pathways. Momentous has signed a contract with SpaceX to join an upcoming transporter rideshare mission launching as soon as early 2026. The company says it plans to use this port for the launch of its Orbital Service Vehicle to transport a mix of payloads from the US Department of Defense and commercial customers to Low Earth orb. And that is it for today's Intel Briefing. Thank you for listening. As always, links to further reading on all the stories mentioned are included in our show notes along with information on the ISS National Lab sponsored experiments due to return on the next cargo resupply mission and a story from the New York Times on Elon Musk and SpaceX facing federal reviews Hey T Minus Crew, if you find this podcast useful, please do us a favor and share a five star rating and a short review in your favorite podcast app that'll help other space professionals like you to find the show and join the T Minus crew. Thank you so much everybody. We really appreciate it. This episode is brought to you by Dutch Bros. Get stoked for all the holly jolly vibes this season at Dutch Bros. Stay cozy with returning winter faves. Hazelnut Truffle Mocha and Candy Cane Mocha. Plus the new Winter Shimmer Rebel Energy Drink blends up sweet cream and blue razz flavor with soft top and shimmer sprinks to keep those spirits energized all winter long. Download the Dutch Bros app to find your nearest shop. Order ahead and start earning rewards. T Minus producer Alice Carruth spoke to the executive director of Spacecom earlier this week about Florida's Space Week, which is January 27th through 30th, 2025. And yeah, as we mentioned at the top of the show, T Minus will be participating in the events that week and we'll be recording from a booth on the convention floor. So let us know if you're going to be joining us and definitely come by and say hi.
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My name is Ryan Brown. I'm the Executive Director of spacecom, the Space Mobility Conference and Overall Commercial Space Week. The Global Spaceport alliance is on January 27, 2025. The Spacewalk Galileo conference is January 28, 2025 and Spacecom is January 29th and 30th, 2025. I've been involved with Spacecom conference since it was founded 10 years ago in the city of Houston. Took over as executive director in 2022 when we brought the event to Orlando and I've been trying to grow this ever since.
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So tell us a little bit about Spacecom. You've sort of summed it up as three different events, all under one week but can expect for 2025.
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We anticipate this event to be our largest event to date. The Global Spaceport Alliance's Spaceport Summit is on pace to double again from last year and it had doubled last year from the year before. So that event continues to grow and, and has a incredible. It's incredibly important to that particular segment of the industry. The Space Mobility Conference is, is locked and loaded with speakers ready to tackle some of the toughest questions and challenges facing space logistics in terms of our national security missions. And then Spacecon will once again be bringing together industry, civil space, DoD space, international allied partners and more and continuing to push a commercial space industry towards an integrated future. So altogether those three events, Commercial Space Week brings together an audience in Orlando the year where the they don't really see anywhere else. So it's a very unique opportunity for all elements of DoD space, commercial space, civil space to get together and you know, like I said, have the tough conversations about how are we actually going to move forward, how are we actually pushing towards a trillion dollar economy that everybody keeps talking about. We want to be the place where those conversations happen and we leave with action items and everybody's able to go and do and come back the next year and talk about the progress that's been made. And then additionally because of the enthusiasm behind the event, we are adding several new engagements and co located events this year to Commercial Space Week. There's too many to list here and in the short time that we have. So for more information on that visit www.spacecom expo.com to see a full list of everything that's going on. But we have Women in Defense events, we've got War Gaming and Lunar Scenari, we've got spaceworks, things happening on space Florida government. I mean there's all kinds of co located things happening. It really is a very very busy week and hopefully a lot of productivity coming out of everything that's coming together one place at one time there.
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Yeah, I've been very lucky to have come to Spacecom for several years including 2022 when you first came out to Florida and I do see it's a huge growth that we're seeing coming up. Who are some of your keynotes that you're using in this year? Because I'm sure there's some big names out there that people will be interested in coming to listen to.
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Yeah, we're very excited about our keynote lineup this year. And you know, we still have six weeks to go, so we're still working on bringing more in. But you know, the folks that we've had that agreed to come speak to our audience I think are going to be informational and inspirational and we can't wait to see them. So we kick off the first morning of spacecom there with Jim Free, the associate administrator for NASA will have a digital a digital talk for us and then immediately followed by A.C. charania, the chief technologist at NASA, talking about the future plans for research and development that NASA's going to tackle here coming up in the near future. And there's some, I'm sure to be some interesting outlooks and things to be said there with NASA's leadership change coming up here. So everybody will be looking forward to hearing from the senior leadership from NASA there. We've got Kelly Kiedis Ogborn, the vice president of space Commerce and entrepreneurship from the Space foundation is going to give us her perspective on the commercial space economy, you know, based on the space report that the Space foundation produces. So we are, I'm sure, all eager to hear, you know, some of the information and data that the Space foundation is putting out. And Kelly's unique spin on everything that she does is going to be entertaining, I'm sure. And then we're very excited to bring Tom Weiss, the CEO of Sierra Space, in to talk about his vision for the future of integrated on orbit logistics with everything that they're working on and their own integrated technologies, how they're going to start to work with the DoD in civil space and really become a major, major player in the future of like I said on orbit logistics Day two, we've got an awesome NASA panel and we've got center directors from Stennis Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center. We've got executive officers from NASA Space Sustainability, the deputy associate administrator for integration. So this is going to be an extremely senior level panel from NASA talking about the top or the title of their topic is Doing what We've Never Done to do what We've Never Done. So again, I think NASA is really pushing hard into the future and looking at the future of space operations for themselves. And so we should hear from from them on that panel. And then lastly, Dr. Sion Proctor will be coming in, following that panel to share her extremely inspirational story of how she got into space, tell a little bit about herself, and then also leave the audience in everything she does as a National Space Council member globally to talk to our audience about everybody working towards a global, diverse and integrated future. And I think everybody's going to leave that room after hearing her. She's a great speaker, just feeling really pumped up and inspired to go.
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So you've mentioned a few times the audience of who's going to be there. Who is it you think would benefit most from coming to Space Week in Florida? And what is it that you think that they will take away from coming to the spacecom Conference?
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So, yeah, like I said earlier, there's very, very few places globally in terms of an event where you get this many people from this many different facets of the commercial space industry to come together in one place at one time. And that's the uniqueness of the audience. You know, there's a lot of events out there right now. Space is a hot topic for sure, but a lot of them are focused on particular elements, one thing or another. And having all three events located together in one place at one time, bringing it together. DoD space, civil space, Commercial Space, International Allied Partners. We've got large space companies, small startup companies, we have venture capital coming to talk and check out the technology that's on the floor. It's going to be our largest exhibit hall ever this year with over 200 exhibitors. So, you know, the benefit of that is you're able to knock out so much and hear so many different perspectives, meet with so many different people in just one week. I'm sure you're going to leave feeling like, man, I don't feel like I got anything done. I have so many more people here that I wish I could talk to and I just didn't have time. So that's the beauty of this. And then the ability to just be face to face with these folks and have the real conversations and shake hands and experience emotion and frustration and excitement and pride. It's all things that happen at Commercial Space Week. And so if any of that is valuable to you, getting to meet a chance to meet senior leaders from NASA or the Space Force Program, executive officers from NASA or the Space Force, prime contractors from the commercial industry, everybody is there. So there's really no other place like it. And so, you know, we hear stories all the time after the after the show, we're talking to folks and they're like, man, I met somebody there that I didn't expect to see. And it turned into a massive deal or it turned into a new job for me, or it turned into some opportunity that I didn't even expect to get out of the event. So sort of that serendipity that comes with just all the right people being in at the same place at the same time is what we're all about. It's what the event is all about and what we hope to see this, this coming January.
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Absolutely. And T minus is really excited to come. We're going to actually have a space on the floor to do our podcast. So we're hoping to get to speak to a lot of those people that are going to be there in the audience. If people are still interested in coming to the conference, how can they find tickets and what are the details that they need to know?
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Yeah, so we have lots of ways to register. We have three different websites for all three shows. There's a giant registration button on each website. The easiest one to get to is www.spacecom expo.com. click on that register button and you'll be able to register. You can register for all three events. You can register each individual event, whatever fits your, your particular level of expertise and budget approval you're able to sign up for. We'd love to see you come for all four days. But absolutely you can register on site if you get up that morning and feel like you need to be there driving over and we can take you on site. So yeah, we'd love to see everybody out there. Keep an eye out for commercial opportunities to help you save a little bit of money along the way. Here we have a few coming up over the holidays and into the new year.
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We'll be right back. Welcome back. Calling all American educators, and particularly those who know a great educator, Crayola. Yes, the Crayons guys are partnering with Blue Origins Club for the Future and Kennedy Space center to offer educators a once in a lifetime opportunity. They're collaborating on Creativity Launches the Future, which is a national initiative for parents and community members to nominate exceptional educators for a chance to win a VIP trip to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. And the experience is designed to grow educators knowledge of space and encourage them to inspire students about the benefits and possibilities of space. Twelve educators will be randomly selected from the nominees and announced as part of Crayola's Creativity week in early 2025. The winners will tour Kennedy Space center to Visitor Complex and Blue Origin's new Glenn Rocket Factory. They'll also take home space themed lessons for their classrooms and might have the opportunity to witness a rocket launch. We know how those go, so it's a might. But if that wasn't enough, Crayola and Blue Origins Club for the Future are also offering free education resources available now online. The whole campaign aims to support and engage educators and students across the country with hands on activities to help students envision themselves in space related careers and learn about the amazing innovations that have come out of the space program. Honestly, we really love it when creativity and space come together like this. That's it for T minus for December 18, 2024 brought to you by N2K CyberWire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@spare.n2k.com we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us@space2k.com or submit the survey in the Show Notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K strategic workforce intelligence optimizes the value of your biggest investment your people. We make you smarter about your team while making your team smarter. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Our Executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president, Peter Kilby is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomor.
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